“Either it’s lying really still, waiting for someone to get close enough to bite their face off, or it’s some outer space thing where if you touch it its spirit sort of jumps into your body and possesses you, making your eyes go black and giving you the taste for human flesh.

“In summary, it’s someone else’s problem.”

And Cambridge professor of zoology, Roy Hobbs, added: “You can see it’s gone all hard and there’s clumps of fur missing. Just look at it.

“I really like science, discovering new species and so forth but I also realised many years ago while doing my PhD that there are some right manky fucking things that I wouldn’t touch with yours.”